A Little Thing Called Life

by Linda Thompson

  “Aw, honey,” I said, putting my arms around him, even as I couldn’t help but giggle compassionately.

  “So I was always self-conscious about my neck,” he said. “I thought I had a skinny little chicken neck, because my mama and daddy said that to me when I was little, sitting at the kitchen table. That’s why I’ve always worn my collar turned up. It’s not because I think I’m cool, or I’m trying to be cool. It’s because I’m trying to hide my little chicken neck. The people don’t understand that. But you know because I’m telling you.”

  “My poor little Gullion,” I said, kissing his neck and thinking how incredible it was that he’d started the international fad of turning your collar up, to look sharp, and be cool, all because he’d been trying to hide what he thought of as his most embarrassing feature.

  Of course, this only made me love him more. As did another deeply personal story, this time not about an aspect of his iconic dress, but about one of his most beloved songs, “In the Ghetto.” As Elvis told me, when his good friend Sammy Davis Jr. was given that song by its writer, Mac Davis, he turned it down.

  “In all authenticity, I can’t do this song, because I never lived this,” Sammy said. “But I’ll tell you who did. Elvis Presley.”

  So Mac Davis gave the song to Elvis. And while Sammy would go on to cover it, the definitive version was, of course, recorded by Elvis, who could sing it with such authority and feeling because he had lived in the ghetto. He’d experienced firsthand the desperation and injustice of that kind of life. Anyone who knows the song only has to think of the recurring line, “And his mama cried,” to be reminded of the powerful love he had for his mother.

  There was a simple goodness to Elvis’s mother that kept him humble, no matter the stratospheres of fame and wealth he achieved. He always remained aware of the greater worth of people like Gladys and the values they lived by. Elvis told me his mother could not read or write, and that when people asked her for her autograph after he became famous, she could have only signed with an “X,” but she didn’t want to do that.

  “Let me just take this to the back room,” she said to cover for herself. Once out of sight, she had someone write her name for her.

  That’s how it was in the Depression era.

  He talked about his mother a lot, always referring back to their nicknames for each other—he called her Satnin—and the wise advice she’d given him. He occasionally called me Satnin, too.

  “My mama always said I should marry a brown-eyed girl,” he told me early on.

  “Really?” I asked.

  “Yeah, when I saw your brown eyes, I thought that’s the girl that my mama would’ve wanted me to be with,” he said. “You have kindness in your eyes. Mama said never trust a blue-eyed woman. You’ve got to marry a brown-eyed girl. She’ll be more down-to-earth. She’ll care for you more. She’ll be there for you. She won’t be disloyal to you. She won’t be unfaithful.” Of course I think Elvis’s mother having brown eyes herself might have had something to do with her admonition.

  Elvis was the original mama’s boy. And I don’t attach an ounce of derogatory meaning to the term, either. I’ve always encouraged my girlfriends and any young women I meet to look for a man who loves his mother, because that makes a big difference in the way he perceives women. Anyone could mask a darker side, of course. But I think if men love their mothers, they’re innately going to have a basic respect and love for women, as well as a desire to protect them.

  During our first month together, Elvis showed this respect for me in many ways, but perhaps the clearest display was how he remained true to his word and never put any pressure on me to have sex with him until I was ready. Not that he didn’t continue to enjoy teasing me on the subject, which was his way with most subjects, no matter how serious or silly. A couple of weeks after we’d first said, “I love you,” we were in our suite at the Hilton together. As we kissed and caressed each other, he came to be lying on top of me on the bed. He pulled back a little and looked into my face.

  “Honey, are you nervous?” he asked. “You feel like you’re kind of nervous.”

  “Well, a little a bit,” I said.

  “Sweetheart, you know I promised you when we first met,” he said. “I know you’re a virgin. I respect that. I’m glad you’re a virgin, and I want you to wait until you’re absolutely ready, and you can absolutely trust me to wait until you’re ready.”

  “Oh, I know that,” I said, smiling with appreciation.

  “And you really do believe all that shit, don’t you?” he joked, laughing uproariously, as he had when he’d made a similar remark during our first night together in Las Vegas, which, although only a month earlier, now felt like lifetimes ago, and in a way, it was.

  “No, I’m just kidding, honey,” he said. “Of course we’ll wait.”

  So we didn’t have sex that night. We rolled around on the bed, and kissed, and laughed while he tickled me, and as always, we had a lot of fun with each other.

  And then, it was early September, after we’d been living together for nearly two months, in our Presidential Suite on the thirtieth floor of the Las Vegas Hilton. We were in our king-sized bed on a pedestal, with a mirrored ceiling above us, reflecting Elvis and me tangled in a loving entwinement of arms, legs, kisses, and deeply felt intimacy. And let’s just say if you’re not ready then, you’re never going to be ready in your whole entire lifetime. It was time to go big or go home. It was all so unbelievably romantic, and perfect, and heartfelt, and I knew I was ready to make love with this man I absolutely adored with all of my heart and soul.

  He was so sweet and tender with me, and yet I was overcome by emotion, and I began to cry softly. I believe I had attached so much significance to losing my virginity I needed to shed a few tears over the moment. Looking back, I realize how antiquated my perception of the entire scene was, but remember, Elvis was an old-fashioned guy who appreciated the heck out of my innocence.

  Elvis held me close, comforting me.

  “Honey, don’t cry,” he said. “Please don’t cry.”

  I don’t want to give the impression that I was a drama queen in any way—there were just a few teardrops quietly moistening my flushed cheeks. For a long moment, Elvis and I held each other’s gaze, and then he rethought his directive.

  “No, go ahead,” he said. “You go ahead. You cry. That’s what you need to do right now. You do anything you want to do. If you want to cry, you cry, sweetheart.”

  In that moment, as in so many others, he was such a loving, kind, compassionate partner. That’s why he got away with so much, I think now, with a knowing laugh, when I look back on our time together. But I also view him with so much appreciation and gratitude, because he was a genuine love of a person, and that’s why I was compelled to give him everything that I was, with every fiber of my being.

  And perhaps it was because we’d become so close that Elvis felt comfortable letting me into the most guarded part of his world. In early September, Elvis finished up in Las Vegas, and he took me back to Los Angeles, where we would now be staying in his new estate on Monovale Drive in Holmby Hills. His daughter, Lisa Marie, who had been splitting her time between Priscilla and Elvis since they’d separated earlier in the year, would be joining us there.

  I’ve always loved children, and of course I knew how much Elvis cherished his little girl, and so I was excited to meet her. Elvis didn’t give me any special instructions about how to talk to her or behave around her; he trusted me with her, which of course meant the world to me.

  When we arrived at the house, Elvis gave me a tour, and afterward we lay together on side-by-side chaise longues next to the pool, holding hands, as was our way, with our faces turned up to the sun. A member of Elvis’s entourage came down the driveway toward us to let Elvis know that Lisa Marie had arrived. Elvis went up and got Lisa and brought her down to the pool. As they approached, I sat up and smiled at her. She was so cute, looking like a miniature Marilyn Monroe. She definitely had her
daddy’s sleepy eyes, and her blond hair was slightly disheveled. She was a part of Elvis, and so I’d loved her before I even met her.

  “This is Daddy’s new girlfriend, Linda,” he said. “She’s from Memphis.”

  Lisa was only four and a half years old at the time, and of course she was very shy about meeting someone new, and so she stayed close by her daddy’s leg.

  “Hi,” she said, tentatively.

  “Hey, I’ve heard a lot about you,” I said. “Your daddy’s told me so many nice things about you. I’m really happy to meet you.”

  Elvis stretched out again on the chair next to me, our hands instantly finding each other. Lisa began to play around the side of the pool, with both of us keeping a careful watch over her, to make sure she was safe and having a good time.

  I had really long hair that fell down past my waist, and because it was a hot afternoon, I had it hanging over the back of my chair to keep it off my shoulders. After Lisa had a chance to get her bearings, she rambled up to me and ran her fingers along the edges of my hair, playing with it as it cascaded behind me. And then, she just kept moving along, like a skittish animal, continuing to play around the pool. This happened several times, with Elvis and me smiling at her, and at each other, every time she approached.

  And then she came up to me and paused in front of me, more confident now.

  “Excuse me, Linda,” she said.

  “What, honey?”

  “Do you mind if I brush your hair?”

  “No, that would be great,” I said, trying to contain how thrilled I was.

  “Daddy, can I go up to the house and get a brush?”

  “Of course, honey,” he said.

  Because the property was gated, and there were employees everywhere on the grounds, we knew it was safe for her to walk back to the house by herself. As we watched her run away, Elvis beamed at me again. I could tell he was very pleased that Lisa Marie and I had connected right away.

  “Oh, your hair is so pretty and so long,” she said when she returned with her brush.

  “Well, thank you,” I said.

  She was so careful and gentle with me that she didn’t catch a tangle or anything. She was very serious about doing a good job, and she stood there for probably ten minutes, brushing my hair. We were close from that moment on.

  I think it made Elvis feel good to know just how much I loved Lisa Marie, and that he could leave her in my charge. I believe he trusted that I would always keep an eye on her and look out for her best interests by caring for her and nurturing her growth. He didn’t ever give me any parameters with Lisa Marie, and I was really pleased that he had faith in my instincts as much as he did. I think that, because I nurtured him so completely, he understood that would carry over to Lisa as well.

  The more time I spent with Elvis, the more I understood that he was an extremely paradoxical person. As I had already witnessed, he could be the sweetest man, one just too good for this earth. As I came to see soon enough, though, he could also flip that switch with a temper so vicious and uncontrolled it seemed he’d never calm down again. In times of reflection and repose, I know he struggled with this aspect of his personality, but given that everything about his life was exaggerated—his looks, his talent, his fame, his generosity, and his passion—so was his anger. When he let go of all self-control, he morphed from an angel descended from heaven to the devil incarnate, and the sparks could really fly. With time, I came to learn what would set him off, but in the beginning, I was shocked by how quickly he could change from light to shadow.

  The first time I saw it happen was in our first month together. We were having a general conversation about our day-to-day life, and he was talking about the guys who worked for him. I was still trying to get everybody straight, being as there were thirteen central guys in the Memphis Mafia, plus assorted members of his entourage.

  “Red, I know,” I said. “Then there’s Sonny. And Lamar Fike. Jerry Schilling is your friend that comes to support sometimes. Charlie Hodge works onstage with you.”

  “Well, Sonny West is Red West’s cousin,” he said.

  “Sonny is the good-looking guy, right?”

  “What?”

  “Sonny, he’s the good-looking guy,” I said.

  “Oh you think Sonny’s good looking?” he said, the volume and tone of his voice rapidly escalating. “Oh really? Oh you think he’s good looking? I think I told you before, don’t you ever tell me that another guy is good looking. He works for me. I don’t want that in my head that you think he’s good looking. He works for me.”

  “I didn’t mean anything except trying to differentiate who’s who,” I said, shocked.

  It wasn’t like I’d said that I found him really attractive. I’d simply observed that he happened to be a nice-looking guy. And just like that, my sweet little Buntyn flipped out on me. Once a little time had passed, Elvis’s anger subsided. It was almost as if he emerged from the center of a hurricane of his own creation and came blinking into the light. I made a mental note not to do that again.

  There were also moments when I saw that Elvis’s boyish impulsiveness could have some potentially dire consequences, and not just for him, but also for those around him. And even with so many constant companions in his orbit, there wasn’t necessarily anyone present to be the voice of reason. With all of those pills readily available all of the time, Elvis wasn’t the only one who indulged. And some of the guys would sometimes laugh and tell stories about how they’d all been obliterated on one night or another. This left the job of being responsible to fall on me, and made me feel even more like his mommy than when he called me such as a term of endearment.

  During one of our first few stays together at the Las Vegas Hilton, I had just gotten out of the shower and still had a towel wrapped around my head, and another around my body. Having just walked past the toilet area, I was standing in front of the mirror, about to remove my towel turban to comb out my long wet hair. I felt a rush of air behind me, against my lower legs. There were a couple of loud pings, and the glass mirror on the bathroom door shattered with a dramatic cascade of broken glass.

  I stood frozen in shock, my arms still reaching up toward the towel on my head, my heart thundering in my chest, afraid to move or step any closer to the shattered glass. There was a loud pounding on the other side of the door.

  “Linda, Linda, are you all right?” said one of Elvis’s guys.

  “Yeah, what was that?” I asked. “What happened?”

  “Elvis was just having a little target practice out here, and the bullet went through the wall.”

  “What?” I asked, opening the door to see that the bullet had also broken a glass-mirrored closet door in the adjacent room.

  I turned and looked back into the bathroom, where my eye was drawn to the toilet paper holder, a few inches from where I’d passed by only seconds before. It was made of metal, which was flared out from the bullet’s impact. So the bullet had apparently passed through the wall from the room where Elvis was playing with one of his guns, gone through the toilet paper holder, past my legs, out through the bathroom door, breaking the mirror as it did so, and then hit the glass doors in the room outside my bathroom, also fracturing them. If I had been sitting on the toilet, the bullet would have hit my thighs, possibly going straight through them. You get the picture. It was an extremely close call and could have been devastating. I had no idea what caliber gun he’d fired, but clearly it was powerful, if it had managed to travel that far and do that much damage along the way.

  I threw on my robe, the towel still on my head, and rushed into our suite’s living room, where I found Elvis lying on the sofa. He was ghost white and clearly shaken up, but trying to appear calm. Against the far wall, which was directly behind my bathroom, was a big poster with a bull’s-eye target on it, which they put up all over Vegas at the time, advertising Elvis’s engagement. Perhaps he was bored, but for some reason he’d had the notion to take a shot. He hadn’t thought about the fact
that my bathroom was behind the wall, and I was in the bathroom at that exact moment.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I yelled. “And what were you thinking? You could have killed me.”

  Now, remember, I didn’t swear at all back then, so these were strong words.

  His face was ashen, and he had abruptly sat up, his leg jiggling nervously.

  “Honey, I just didn’t think,” he said. “I didn’t realize you were in the bathroom, and I didn’t think the bullet would go through the wall.”

  “It went through two walls and the toilet paper holder. If I had been sitting on the toilet, it would have gone through both of my thighs. You could have killed me.”

  “Well, honey, I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know.”

  “You’re sorry, really?” I asked, too scared and mad to accept his first apology.

  “Well, what the hell do you want me to say?” he said, getting defensive. “You just want to go back to Memphis?”

  “Yeah, at least I won’t get shot at there,” I said, storming away to my dressing room.

  He followed close behind me, taking me in his arms and holding me for a long time, until we both recovered from what had happened and the even greater terror of what might have been.

  “Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” he said again and again. “I just wasn’t thinking.”

  “Don’t be so crazy with those guns,” I said. “They are not toys. You could kill somebody.”

  Elvis may have been my life’s first adventure into loving unconditionally, but he tested that love more than a few times. Most of the time in our first year or two, such incidents were few and far between, and I was fortunate enough to only see his temper flare up against the guys in his entourage. But even then, I hated being around when Elvis went over to his own personal dark side.